EP REVIEW: Cenobia – ‘Lethal Devotion’

Okay, that’s enough now. We’ve had our fun, but can we not make it to where metal is just this?

Cenobia is an utterly un-unique prospect. It’s—all together, now!—a masked, ‘anonymous’ alt-metal project already signed to a significant label (naturally). The main performer uses exclusively third-person female pronouns in some highfalutin gesture towards ‘mystique’, and there’s probably some cryptic bollocks passing for lore to dig into if you’re particularly jobless. Well, trust the Sleep Token fanbase to do just that! They’ve deduced that, given the look, the use of black body paint on her hands and arms, and phrases like “She makes music for Him” in the marketing, Cenobia is presenting herself as some kind of acolyte to Vessel.

So, to summarise, we seem to be dealing with either a copy of a copy of a copy, or Sleep Token fan-fiction. The latter option also come dreamed up by the clinically deranged, so…even better…

Honestly, acts like this could be the key to world peace at this point, yet the banal, overexposed cottage industries they create upon spawning would still leave you cursing their existence. Is there anyone who’s actually interested in this, especially if they are just piggybacking on the scene’s biggest name? (Allegedly, it’s Australian folk singer Holly ‘Cookie’ Baker behind this, which makes the opportunistic grab seem even blatant.) Nothing about Cenobia reads as though it’s being done for creativity’s sake.

Want more proof? Just listen to the thing! Lethal Devotion is a blank, hollow product of an EP that can’t even pay fealty to its scene overlords correctly. Sleep Token, for their many faults, can sound exploratory and adventurous in the music they make. It doesn’t always pay off, but longer songs and a grander musical canvas implies a vision. Cenobia, on the other hand, takes the downtuned, space-filling dirge, and does literally nothing with it. The closest thing is some acoustic texture atop Make Us Whole Again, though that’s hardly a component with much value. It’s just another layer to slap on, because maximalism underpinned by no direction is the way to go, apparently.

Thus, Cenobia simply refuse to leave a mark. All your fave tropes are accounted for—the anti-pace; the heavy guitars in service of nothing; the drummer that’s way overqualified for something like this, as seen on Devour Me. On top of that is the total omission of flair or ‘personality’ that Sleep Token (or, God help us, PRESIDENT) can glance towards on a good day. Every one of Lethal Devotion’s six songs is an utter chore to sit through, such is Cenobia’s lack of anything even resembling thrust. They slog and gallumph along near-identically, only to reach a point where they’re forgotten as soon as they arrive.

To add further insult to injury, the notion of mystery or reverential significance is essentially a non-factor. Presumably, that’s supposed to come from Cenobia’s singer as a faceless, ethereal presence, but it doesn’t. To be fair, she is one of the better singers among anonymetal’s troupe, though shifting that to a place of dark, spiritualised enigma? That simply doesn’t happen. It’s where any cult-like inference to Cenobia falls apart, in an almost total lack of desperation or uncontrollable, almost frightening yearning. Throne Of Want perhaps gets the closest, though that’s only when what sounds like a male voice screams out “Do you see her now? / She did this for you” with more pointed intent. Otherwise, it’s sterile and unfeeling for what it represents. When an album like Kristin Hayter’s Saved! is out there, in which the terror of worship and devotion is portrayed properly and unflinchingly, Cenobia just feels like even less of…anything.

Don’t expect this to get any better, either. Cenobia really does feel like the new pinnacle of non-effort as currency in metal, and how gullible the right sources are to the easiest, laziest gimmick possible. Even with PRESIDENT, there’s the incredulity at how they got so far so fast; they’re fun to rag on. Cenobia have none of that, even remotely. Across Lethal Devotion, not one emotion stirs, because that’s not the point. Instead, you’re meant to think it sounds roughly like Sleep Token and buy into it, oblivious to how there’s essentially nothing of value here. And if that’s what metal is now, in its biggest form…let’s just do something else, okay?

For fans of: Sleep Token, PRESIDENT, whoever the next one of these will be

‘Lethal Devotion’ by Cenobia is out now on Fearless Records.

Words by Luke Nuttall